How Healthy Marriages win every time in the fight against poverty

Couples have a Fantasy about marriage, and then fail to put God first in their relationship, grasping across great divides that end up in divorce | Source

Science backs up the benefits of Healthy Marriages

The American Psychological Association says it best:

Marriage and divorce are both common experiences. In Western cultures, more than 90 percent of people marry by age 50. Healthy marriages are good for couples’ mental and physical health. (In 2011, Science Daily released an article titled: Marriage is Good for mental and Physical Health, Study Finds)

They are also good for children; growing up in a happy home protects children from mental, physical, educational and social problems. About 40 to 50 percent of married couples in the United States divorce. The divorce rate for subsequent marriages is even higher.

Scientific evidence backs up the benefits of having a healthy marriage because marriage is a divine institution created by God between Man and Woman, to be monogamous with each other and build a lifelong covenant with God being the head of the household. Until people start putting God first in their lives and marriages, the family unit will continue to fall apart.

To Build a Godly Relationship: Pray about your spouse/or future spouse to do these things:

1. Someone who laughs with you

2. Someone who prays with you

3. He/she will understand you for who you are

4. You can share secrets with this person

5. You can trust this person with everything

Children raised watching their parents have a healthy marriage are more emotionally stable and better adjusted in life | Source

Divorce is an epidemic when you see half of American Households split up | Source

Divorce: an Epidemic

When I was growing up, divorce was heard of but rarely exploited as it is today. I knew it happened, but it seemed few and far between. Now, it has become an every day common occurrence in the normal realm of so-called living.

On Familyfacts.org, it states: Marriage appears to reduce adult and child poverty. Children in non-intact families face a higher risk of poverty through childhood, and the negative economic consequences of divorce tend to be greater for women and children than men. Marriage could lift a substantial portion of poor, even unemployed, unmarried mothers out of poverty.

You see the media portray perfection when the rich and famous get married, only years later (if they last that long) to hype the divorces as if their personal lives are a playing field for a shameful soap opera. Of course that is Hollywood and as we all know money isn't usually an issue and they move on with their lives and continue to build their careers and live lavish lifestyles.

On the other end of the divorce spectrum, you have divorce that causes ripple effects and children are in the crossfires, thrusting them in direct lines with poverty and lack of emotional stability and economic opportunities. David Leonhardt of the New York Times quoted: "Quite apart from any gender differences, there is near-consensus that the retreat from marriage has not been good for children."

"Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of his womb is his reward." Psalm 127:3.

In fact, studies have revealed that: "Single parents have much lower incomes and much higher poverty rates than their married counterparts. Some of this, to be sure, is because they also have other characteristics such as less education that limit what they can earn. But two incomes, even if they are low, are always better than one."-Isabel V. Sawhill

Single parenting is gruesome. It is heartbreaking. Lack of opportunities and education and income inequality thrust single parent households into poverty, with no end in sight.

This is one epidemic we cannot afford to keep failing at, yet daily, we do it anyway. Regardless of the consequences. Regardless of the children torn between parent and households. Divorce has and is still breeding a hierarchy of severe economic breakdown with emotional and physical damage and the Scientific evidence proves it.

If you are or have been going through a divorce, I would ask you stop what you are doing.

Go to a quiet place and talk to God. Pray about everything. Pour your heart out to him, tell him everything. He knows what you are going through anyway, just talk to him. Prayer moves mountains. It heals. It blesses.

Divorce is not the end of a life, but it can be a new beginning so long as you put God first. That is why prayer is so vital. Prayer does move mountains, because when you pray and give your needs and desires to God, he opens doors of opportunity for you. So if you are a single parent, wallowing in the pits of despair in poverty, pray about it. Tell God you want to do better, and he will make a way.

Statistics prove single parent households have a higher rate of poverty, but it doesn't have to be that way. Prayer moves mountains and opens doors of opportunities for single parent households that only God can mend. | Source